Earthquake Tip

17

Learning Earthquake Design and Construction

How do Earthquakes affect Reinforced Concrete Buildings?

Reinforced Concrete Buildings
In recent times, reinforced concrete buildings have become common in India, particularly in towns and cities. Reinforced concrete (or simply RC) consists of two primary materials, namely concrete with reinforcing steel bars. Concrete is made of sand, crushed stone (called aggregates) and cement, all mixed with pre-determined amount of water. Concrete can be molded into any desired shape, and steel bars can be bent into many shapes. Thus, structures of complex shapes are possible with RC. A typical RC building is made of horizontal members (beams and slabs) and vertical members (columns and walls), and supported by foundations that rest on ground. The system comprising of RC columns and connecting beams is called a RC Frame. The RC frame participates in resisting the earthquake forces. Earthquake shaking generates inertia forces in the building, which are proportional to the building mass. Since most of the building mass is present at floor levels, earthquake-induced inertia forces primarily develop at the floor levels. These forces travel downwards - through slab and beams to columns and walls, and then to the foundations from where they are dispersed to the ground. As inertia forces accumulate downwards from the top of the building, the columns and walls at lower storeys experience higher earthquake-induced forces (Figure 1) and are therefore designed to be stronger than those in storeys above.
5 4

In most buildings, the geometric distortion of the slab is negligible in the horizontal plane; this behaviour is known as the rigid diaphragm action (Figure 2b). Structural engineers must consider this during design.

(a) Out-of-plane Vertical Movement (b) In-plane Horizontal Movement

Figure 2: Floor bends with the beam but moves all columns at that level together. After columns and floors in a RC building are cast and the concrete hardens, vertical spaces between columns and floors are usually filled-in with masonry walls to demarcate a floor area into functional spaces (rooms). Normally, these masonry walls, also called infill walls, are not connected to surrounding RC columns and beams. When columns receive horizontal forces at floor levels, they try to move in the horizontal direction, but masonry walls tend to resist this movement. Due to their heavy weight and thickness, these walls attract rather large horizontal forces (Figure 3). However, since masonry is a brittle material, these walls develop cracks once their ability to carry horizontal load is exceeded. Thus, infill walls act like sacrificial fuses in buildings; they develop cracks under severe ground shaking but help share the load of the beams and columns until cracking. Earthquake performance of infill walls is enhanced by mortars of good strength, making proper masonry courses, and proper packing of gaps between RC frame and masonry infill walls. However, an infill wall that is unduly tall or long in comparison to its thickness can fall out-of-plane (i.e., along its thin direction), which can be life threatening. Also, placing infills irregularly in the building causes ill effects like short-column effect and torsion (these will be discussed in subsequent IITK-BMTPC Earthquake Tips).

Floor Level

3 2 1

Total Force

Figure 1: Total horizontal earthquake force in a building increases downwards along its height.

Roles of Floor Slabs and Masonry Walls

Floor slabs are horizontal plate-like elements, which facilitate functional use of buildings. Usually, beams and slabs at one storey level are cast together. In residential multi-storey buildings, thickness of slabs is only about 110-150mm. When beams bend in the vertical direction during earthquakes, these thin slabs bend along with them (Figure 2a). And, when beams move with columns in the horizontal direction, the slab usually forces the beams to move together with it.

Compression

Gap

Cracks

Figure 3: Infill walls move together with the columns under earthquake shaking. 33

IITK-BMTPC Earthquake Tip 17

How do Earthquakes affect Reinforced Concrete Buildings? page 2 (which receive forces from columns) should be Horizontal Earthquake Effects are Different stronger than columns. Further, connections between Gravity loading (due to self weight and contents) on beams & columns and columns & foundations should buildings causes RC frames to bend resulting in not fail so that beams can safely transfer forces to stretching and shortening at various locations. Tension columns and columns to foundations. is generated at surfaces that stretch and compression When this strategy is adopted in design, damage is at those that shorten (Figure 4b). Under gravity loads, likely to occur first in beams (Figure 5a). When beams tension in the beams is at the bottom surface of the are detailed properly to have large ductility, the beam in the central location and is at the top surface at building as a whole can deform by large amounts the ends. On the other hand, earthquake loading causes despite progressive damage caused due to consequent tension on beam and column faces at locations yielding of beams. In contrast, if columns are made different from those under gravity loading (Figure 4c); weaker, they suffer severe local damage, at the top and the relative levels of this tension (in technical terms, bottom of a particular storey (Figure 5b). This localized bending moment) generated in members are shown in damage can lead to collapse of a building, although Figure 4d. The level of bending moment due to columns at storeys above remain almost undamaged. earthquake loading depends on severity of shaking and can exceed that due to gravity loading. Thus, under strong earthquake shaking, the beam ends can develop tension on either of the top and bottom faces. Since concrete cannot carry this tension, steel bars are required on both faces of beams to resist reversals of bending moment. Similarly, steel bars are required on all faces of columns too.
Damage Large displacement at collapse Small displacement at collapse

Damage distributed in all storeys

All damage in one storey

Strength Hierarchy
For a building to remain safe during earthquake shaking, columns (which receive forces from beams) should be stronger than beams, and foundations (a)
Strong Columns, Weak Beams

(b) Weak Columns,

Strong Beams

Gravity Load

Earthquake Load

Figure 5: Two distinct designs of buildings that result in different earthquake performances columns should be stronger than beams.

Relevant Indian Standards

(a) The Bureau of Indian Standards, New Delhi, published the following Indian standards pertaining to design of RC frame buildings: (a) Indian Seismic Code (IS 1893 (Part 1), 2002) for calculating earthquake forces, (b) Indian Concrete Code (IS 456, 2000) for design of RC members, and (c) Ductile Detailing Code for RC Structures (IS 13920, 1993) for detailing requirements in seismic regions. Related
Tension

Stretching of member and locations of tension

Tension

Earthquake Tip

Tip 5: What are the seismic effects on structures?

Reading Material
Englekirk,R.E.,(2003), Seismic Design of Reinforced and Precast Concrete Buildings, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., USA Penelis,G.G., and Kappos,A.J., (1997), Earthquake Resistant Concrete Structures, E&FN SPON, UK

(b)
Amount of tension

(c)

Authored by: C.V.R.Murty Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur Kanpur, India Sponsored by: Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council, New Delhi, India (d) Figure 4: Earthquake shaking reverses tension and compression in members reinforcement is required on both faces of members. 34
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